Profile of Mr.Smith

Actually, there is only one thing that's really terrible about PIATs:
You cannot use them to deny abandoned team weapons.

e.g., PIATS will fail to damage mortars, even if you are standing next to them when you fire (either with normal attack, or with attack ground).

This drawback becomes more pronounced since the UKF lacks the indirect fire options to counter team weapons.

The only options I have found to cover for this role are the AT gun and snipers (takes too long & very risky).

This thing is closer to "press the button to win" than anything in this game.

I've used the ability many times myself, and this is my impression as well.

The delay between triggering the ability and seeing its effects might already be OK. What's not OK is that (I don't feel) there is sufficient indication for the other team to react (a red flare could mean so many things). An appropriate audio cue would help immensely (e.g. loud howlitzer shots).

Now, regarding the commander itself, the following abilities could use a bit of help:

Wreck recovery team:

My main gripe with this ability is that the salvage team sappers cannot build mines (anvil engineers would be good too, but I don't care as much), and the ability spawns 2 of them.

• Either reduce the MP cost and spawn only 1 squad (reduced popcap for useless units), or
  
• give full utility to the recovery teams (mines, anvil upgrade)
  

Forward observation point

The ability costs 300 MP and 60 FU and confers no bonuses. There should be a reason to use this ability proactively (i.e., long before you are about to burn your MU on the abilities).

A minor utility buff would really help. Consider one of the following:

• Give Observation Points a free recon ability (copy-paste the one from the command vehicle)
  
• Make Forward Assemblies eligible for conversion (thus you get to use it on a durable, and repairable building)
  

To compensate, relic could introduce a brief (10-15 second) cooldown on the building abilities, before these can be used.

To the 1v1 crowd: I am not in favour of nerfing the stats of any of the units I mentioned.

However, to me, it seems that each of these units has been balanced according to the strengths and weaknesses of the doctrine that they reside. When you remove the player boundaries and allow aura units to buff units of my allies, it becomes a mess. I will motivate this with an example.

Consider the Panzer IV command tank.
The tank confers a 20% damage reduction bonus to both infantry and tanks.

This is massive. Compare this to the recently-introduced vet3 Riflemen which reduces received accuracy by 25%. Received accuracy only affects resilience to small-arms fire and, still, the buff turned riflemen from a late-game liability to terminators. Panzer IV's command aura grants resilience to all sources (your grenadiers will never be 1-shot by a mortar shell/grenade).

This is perfectly fine, though, when we examine the unit in the vacuum of 1vs1 balance. None of the doctrines that include a meaty shock unit that can lead the assault (e.g. a Tiger for instance).

However, things start to become VERY broken when the game allows you to combine this buff with your teammates' units. Some of my own favourite combos include the following:

Panzer IV with any of the following:
- King Tiger (375 armor, and 1600 effective HP), Tiger
- Obersoldaten (reduces their only vulnerability; that to explosives)

UKF airlanding officer with Riflemen (face it; Tommies are plain awful at attacking anything).

Now, to those people that think stacking auras are OK. Do they think that ANY of those combos I mentioned should still be allowed in the game?

There are multiple units (e.g. officers, tanks) that give buffs to nearby units through auras. Some of those auras are passive (e.g. Panzer IV command tank aura), whereas other auras have a pay-per-use munition cost (e.g. airlanding officer's heroic charge ability).

This post is not about discussing whether aura units belong to CoH2 (there are other threads about this issue in COH2.org).

Instead, this thread is about pointing the following:
- Aura units that buff friendly players' units is broken (i.e. not just the units of the owner). The aura buffs stack, and with the right combination of commanders in a teamgame, one side can simply overwhelm the other with minimal effort (e.g. combine a Panzer IV command tank with a Panther V command tank and it's gg for the other team)
- Certain aura unit's effects and abilities that do not correspond to the tooltip (i.e., potential bugs that make the stacking effect even worse).
- The (negative) effects of aura stacking to balance only become worse the larger the teamgame becomes.

The rest of the post consists of two sections:
1. The first section discusses potentially bugged abilities on aura units (with the intend to -fix them)
2. The second section lists all units and abilities that also buff friendly players' units (with the intent to minimize the number of such units)

1) UNITS WITH (POTENTIALLY) BUGGED ABILITIES

OKW Sturm Offizier:

According to the tooltip, the officer's aura is meant to apply both a strong buff (additional accuracy) and a strong debuff (forced retreat when the officer dies).

- The buff applies to all allied units (friendly players' units as well). However, the aura does not apply the force-retreat penalty to other player's units (it only applies it to the owner of the unit)

- According to Cruzz, the effect of the "Target Them" ability of the officer, does not really correspond to what the tooltip says. Here is the excerpt from another thread:

OKW Officer "Target Them" ability says it makes opponent units fight harder, but that's a lie. It just increases their received accuracy by 50% for 20 seconds which is not particularly useful with high accuracy okw units except when enemy is in yellow/green cover in which case it is a straight up 50% boost to DPS against that squad.

OST Panzer IV Command Tank:

This unit buffs all nearby friendly units with a flat -20% incoming damage buff.

- One issue with the aura is that the Panzer IV Command tank also benefits from the aura itself (this is the only passive aura unit that benefits from its own aura).


OKW Panther PzKpfw V Command Tank:

- The radius of passive aura of the Panther command tank is simply massive, and dwarfs the radius of any other aura in the game.

I have no idea where I can dig up the exact stats, but it feels that most other auras have a radius of at most 30, whereas the radius of the panther command aura has a range that exceeds 60.


UKF Airlanding Officer

- It feels that the ability modifiers/cost for the officer's heroic charge are simply too good for its cost.

2) UNITS THAT APPLY AURA TO FRIENDLY UNITS

With the exception of the UKF command vehicle (thankfully!), every single other aura unit in the game applies the buffs to all friendly units in the game.

Here is a list of all aura units I know that are affected by this (let me know if I left anything out):

OKW:
- Sturm Offizier
- Panther V command tank

OST:
- Panzer IV
- Artillery Field Officer (Concentrated Fire ability)

UKF:
- Airlanding officer (Heroic Charge ability)

I have not tried the following units/abilities, yet:
- USF Captain's On Me ability (doesn't break suppression, but might buff accuracy)
- Soviet Forward Headquarters passive buff
- Any of the numerous UKF commander abilities that buff units in friendly sectors

Usf captain ans guards dance as well

You are correct.

The reason I didn't include Guards and USF captain is that they are being addressed in the upcoming patch.

According to the Balance preview mod:

Bugfixes:
- Updated squad plans on Guards Troops and captain squad to prevent unwanted movement.